IN SPACE: This satellite image shows a low-pressure weather system over the Middle East, hampering U.S. military operations in Iraq. (Photo by NASA/Getty Images)

In a rare naming and shaming of specific defense waste, House Armed Services subcommittee chairman Mike Rogers (R-Alabama) said Jan. 7 of the last military weather satellite “We could have saved the
Air Force and the Congress a lot of aggravation if we put a half of a billion dollars in a parking lot and just burned it.”

The Alabama Congressman had a solid $500 million target of scorn – that’s the shame of the last wasteful satellite. But, the good Congressman was much too modest about who deserves the credit. Congressional defense spenders, like him, and Lockheed Martin, his favorite and the prime contractor on the program, deserve the blame – the Air Force could not have blown this alone.

The half-billion dollars is the amount it would cost to store a little longer and then launch a weather satellite called Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) – 20 (twentieth and last in the program). Another such military weather satellite is badly needed. We need added weather satellite coverage especially because a European satellite, EUMETSAT that has covered the key Middle East weather is not being continued. And the Middle East, of course, is where we have a lot of crucial military action going on that needs accurate weather observed data.

But, the DMSP-20 launch is so problematic that Congress cut back the funding in the most recent defense spending legislation. Some observers think the current Congress may have put in doubt the launch of the DMSP-20 that would cost the $500 million. Congress fenced even the $40 million pittance for the satellite this year with conditions that the Defense Department must demonstrate that is the best option, rather than, say, a small, cheaper, more current version.

It should be understood that the satellite was built by Lockheed, and Lockheed was paid out of defense funds for it. That is right: it was bought from Lockheed and paid for, already. It is just waiting, in very expensive storage, to be launched. So, why might the satellite be scrapped?

One other aspect to understand before delving into this. Mike Rogers himself is one of the strongest friends of defense spending, wasteful or not. His district in Alabama is next to Huntsville, home of the Redstone Arsenal, the U.S. Army Space and Missile Command – and, of course, major Lockheed Martin facilities. The House naturally gave Rogers the chair of the subcommittee on Strategic Forces where he can cheerlead for spending on space and ballistic defense missile. (Like, presumably, for missile defense for California – notwithstanding even the Defense Department deems this wasteful.)

As for problems with using the last DMSP, namely, DMSP-20, first of all, it is a satellite that has a polar orbit. So, it only goes over the Middle East twice a day, when what we need is a satellite hanging all the time, in geosynchronous orbit, right over the Middle East.

Worse, the launch involves a separate Lockheed defense waste scandal. Currently the only launch method we have involves a Lockheed partnership, the United Launch Alliance, which relies on the RD-180 rocket made in Russia. Senator John McCain led a crusade this past year to block launches down the road unless there is an alternative to the Russian rocket. The Russian/Lockheed monopoly means DMSP-20 costs too much to launch.

Parenthetically, many of the Lockheed-made DMSP satellites seem to have had a very serious design defect. One of them blew up in orbit in 2015. Seven more of Lockheed’s defective DMSPs currently in orbit are considered at risk of the same kind of blow-up.

An insightful piece by Colin Clark in Breaking Defense about Rogers (“HASC StratForces Chair Slams Air Force Space Management”) comments “Mr. Rogers is being a wee bit unfair to the Air Force and conveniently ignoring the role the powerful appropriators played in all this.” He adds that the reason the Air Force kept putting off dealing with this problem, until this too-late date, is that “the Air Force really wants to buy F-35s, KC-46 tankers and Long Range Strike Bombers and faces a budget crunch.” Of course, Congress loves the Lockheed F-35s, with all their problems. Congress wants to buy the trillion-dollar new strategic triad, including Long Range Strike Bombers. So the waste on weather satellites is not accidental. Congress – and Lockheed, with its massive lobbying operation – focused buying into the newer, priciest programs, and ignored the old but practical military weather satellite program.

I am Professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, where I focus on government contracting and Congressional legislating. I served as Commissioner on the Congressionally-chartered Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, in which I did three mis...